Brent Daily, co-founder of Roundpegg in Boulder, Colo., took one week off after his son was born. His firm generally offers one month paid leave.
Matt Nager for The Wall Street Journal

Yahoo Inc.YHOO-2.00% announced in April that new fathers can take eight weeks off at full pay. Bank of America Corp.BAC-1.38% offers 12 weeks of paid leave, and Ernst & Young a few years ago bumped its leave policy from two weeks to six. Fifteen percent of U.S. firms provide some paid leave for new fathers, according to a survey from the Society for Human Resource Management to be released on Father's Day.

It sounds like progress, but in reality men are reluctant to take time off for a variety of reasons, ranging from a fear of losing status at work to lingering stereotypes about a father's role in the family.

Related: Why Dads Pass on Paternity Leave

A study of college professors published in 2012 found that only 12% of fathers took paid parental leave when it was offered, compared with 69% of mothers. Jen Wieczner reports.

Leave is the norm for women, but men have only become a part of the discussion as traditional housewife and breadwinner roles have shifted. Countries around the world, such as Sweden and Portugal, have mandated leave for fathers, but leave in the U.S. remains stubbornly short—if it is taken at all.

Approximately 85% of new fathers take some time off after the birth of a child, but of those, the vast majority take a week or two, according to a 2011 study of workers at four Fortune 500 companies by the Boston College Center for Work and Family.

Experts and fathers say it isn't for lack of desire. While Facebook Inc.FB-1.26% operating chief Sheryl Sandberg's manifesto for working women, "Lean In," has cast a spotlight on women's prospects for getting ahead without sacrificing family, fathers are acutely feeling work-life tension, too. Sixty percent of fathers in dual-earner couples reported feeling conflict between work and family responsibilities in 2008, compared with 35% who felt that way in 1977, according to the Families and Work Institute.

Do Involved Fathers Face a Stigma at Work?

"There's still a stigma associated with men who put parenting on an equal footing with their jobs," said Scott Coltrane, a sociologist at the University of Oregon. "Most employers still assume that work comes first for men, while women do all the child care."

Despite the rise of fathers' networks in some companies, many men who openly identify with their parental role at work face pressure or resentment from co-workers. A forthcoming paper from the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management found that men who are active caregivers get teased and insulted at work more than so-called traditional fathers and men without children.

ENLARGE

Active fathers are seen as distracted and less dedicated to their work—the same perception that harms career prospects for many working mothers, said Jennifer Berdahl, the study's lead author, adding that such men are accused of being wimpy or henpecked by their wives.

Brent Daily, co-founder of Boulder, Colo.-based Roundpegg, a maker of employee-engagement software, took one week off after his son was born in 2010 and three days after his daughter's birth in 2012.

Even though his company has an informal policy giving new fathers one month of paid leave, "I felt like I was letting my team down if I wasn't there to carry my share of the burden," said Mr. Daily, 37. "It came down to the choice of, 'Do I do one thing reasonably well or two things really poorly?'"

At Ernst & Young, roughly 500 to 600 men take parental leave every year, with 90% percent of those dads using only two weeks, though the company offers up to six weeks with pay, said Maryella Gockel, the company's flexibility strategy leader.

Men must affirm that they are the baby's primary caregiver in order to take the final four weeks. Ms. Gockel said men generally don't request the extra four weeks because, by the time their wives or partners use up their own leaves, the families generally have outside child care arrangements in place.

A growing body of research shows that longer paternity leaves carry long-term benefits. A 2007 study from researchers at Columbia University found that fathers who take longer leaves are more involved in child care months after returning to work. And a paper by a Cornell University graduate student Ankita Patnaik earlier this year examined leave-policy reforms in Quebec and found that more generous and equitable parental-leave policies led to a greater likelihood that mothers will return to their employers after maternity leave.

Many men who take leave wind up having to work from home. Emails and calls keep rolling in as co-workers and bosses expect new dads to be on call—and dads themselves fear missing out on important projects.

Gilbert Maddock, a vice president at a New York financial services firm, took a week of paid paternity leave after his son was born last May. But even as he was getting acquainted with his new baby, he was spending about 40% of the day on work-related matters. "The nature of my business is sales, and if I'm not there things slow down a lot." He says that he didn't resent the intrusion, and admits he left the door open for contact. "It's just the nature of the beast."

When The Wall Street Journal's Facebook followers were asked for their thoughts on leave, there appeared to be a generational divide—young fathers see leave as more essential, while older workers say it carries a stigma at their workplaces.

Things are unlikely to change until high-ranking bosses take leave themselves, said R.J. Heckman, president of the leadership and talent consulting group at search firm Korn/Ferry.KFY0.21% In a new survey, the firm found that, while three-quarters of male executives believe paternity leave is an important retention tool, only 15% of those executives reported taking such leave themselves.

Figuring out ways for new parents to stay connected to work—without taking away from bonding time with an infant—would also popularize paternity leave, said Ken Matos, senior director of employment research at the Families and Work Institute.

"One of the issues we have to resolve is how to keep people from losing connection to the workplace" during leave, he said. That could mean a weekly phone call with the boss, or agreeing beforehand to a certain amount of contact with the office, he said.

Even without substantial leave, fathers say they managed quality time with their newborns in the early days. For Mr. Daily, it came while rocking them to sleep during nighttime wakings.

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